Dead Tree Update: Chicago and Suburban Shoppers
December 29, 2008
Newsweek Magazine, a dead tree publication in some danger of marginalization, published “Chicago’s Newspapers Facing a Troubled Future” here. When I read this article, I had the impression that the author, F.N. D’Alessio, was writing about Newsweek and the Associated Press. Mr. D’Alessio refers to newspaper “addicts”. I don’t know too many. I receive four dead tree newspapers: the Courier Journal, USA Today (affectionately known as McPaper), the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. I used to get the Financial Times, but the delivery was so erratic I dropped the paper in January 2008. I received an offer of a year’s subscription for $99, and I threw it in the trash. Too much hassle trying to work through clumps of papers arriving twice a week. For me, the most significant comment in the Newsweek story was a comment about the Tribune’s rival, the Chicago Sun Times:
Hollinger’s biggest move was to create the Sun-Times Media Group by buying up 70 suburban and neighborhood newspapers, more than a dozen of which are dailies. Some of those are profitable, and some newspaper analysts envision the Sun-Times company shutting down the namesake paper and keeping the suburban ones.
I read this as a clear statement that big city papers are gone geese. Check out the Tribune’s online version of the newspaper. It is a disaster. My discussion of this wounded duck is here.
The future for dead tree outfits–if there is to be one–is to become ad supported, micro publications serving narrow markets. For years, I thought the Gaithersburg Gazette was had potential. Now that type of publication along with penny shoppers may be the margin of the information world available to the dead tree crowd.
You can make money in niches, but the revenue will buy used Malibus, not the flashy Mercedes the princes of journalism see as suitable transportation.
Stephen Arnold, December 29, 2008
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